Yesterday, there were some reports that the Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima had discussed an upcoming Nintendo 3DS successor, which led to a bit of a tizzy among some people. At that time, I had mentioned that the translation was probably taken out of context, and that Kimishima had only discussed the possibility of a handheld some day, should the market ever ask for it.
Today, Nintendo released their own transcript of the QnA session (via WCCFTech), and it confirms the initial suspicion- Kimishima never discussed a 3DS successor coming to the market. All he said was that for now, the 3DS and Switch will co-exist, and that should the market ask for a full fledged 3DS successor, Nintendo will look into releasing one.
For now, then, the dream of the Nintendo Switch being one unified Nintendo system with all of Nintendo’s games on it remains an alluring, compelling, very real one.